Inquisitors

[QuantumEleven]

Having spent an hour trawling the forums with Google, I got plenty of information on these guys, but still a few unanswered questions. I'm still a bit of a newbie (have been playing for about two months now), and so I apologise if any of this is blindingly obvious / a stupid question / has been answered elsewhere...

(Am playing VI 2.01)

1) As far as I understand it, targetting Inquisitors (I presume Grand Inquisitors are just upgraded Inquisitors with the same abilities) on an enemy unit (read: General) will attempt to "burn" him. Is this equivalent to an assasination attempt (ie targetting him with an Assassin), except that the Inquisitor doesn't die should he fail to kill his target? If that is the case, may I politely enquire what the point of doing this is? AFAIK, killing an enemy general will cause his unit to suffer a massive morale bonus that turn, but he gets "resurrected" with identical stats the next turn, so unless I launch an attack right then and there, I gain nothing (except a possible star for my Inquisitor). If he fails, I gain even less (ie nothing). However, on the boards, lots of people talk about burning enemy Generals with Inquisitors, why are they doing this? I know I'm missing something... :book: ~:confused:

2) Targetting an Inquisitor on a King - yup, can see why one would do this, if he succeeds, he has eliminated the King for good... I would guess that in order to get success chances of above 0%, one would need Grand Inquisitors with several stars at least...

3) Have I understood correctly that the chances of burning someone depend on the Inquisitor's valor (duh), the target's piety (the lower the better), and the target type (Kings being more difficult to assasinate than Generals...). Does the Zeal in the province affect the success chances?

4) "Burning the population". Firstly, what triggers this - do I just leave an Inquisitor sitting in an enemy province (without targetting anyone), where he will first raise zeal for a bit, and then eventually making it collapse by burning people? What does this "burning population" do - I have tried looking at the province stats, but except for a great drop in Zeal, it doesn't seem to do much else. Although I should say that I was not particularly thorough about it, there could have been some effect which I missed... So, if that Zeal raise/drop is the only effect of having an Inquisitor sitting in a province, I can see how it would be useful to affect happiness and crusade uptake, but beyond that... any help?

Thanks in advance! These boards have been tremendously helpful - thank you to all the wise souls out there for sharing their knowledge! ~:) :book:

[English assassin]

(1) Is this equivalent to an assasination attempt (ie targetting him with an Assassin), except that the Inquisitor doesn't die should he fail to kill his target?

yes

AFAIK, killing an enemy general will cause his unit to suffer a massive morale bonus that turn, but he gets "resurrected" with identical stats the next turn

Eh? Does he? I've never noticed this. Even if he does the morale penalty might be worth having.

2) Targetting an Inquisitor on a King - yup, can see why one would do this, if he succeeds, he has eliminated the King for good... I would guess that in order to get success chances of above 0%, one would need Grand Inquisitors with several stars at least

Dunno, but I do know I have never seen an ordinary inqusitor with more than 0% chance

3) Have I understood correctly that the chances of burning someone depend on the Inquisitor's valor (duh), the target's piety (the lower the better), and the target type (Kings being more difficult to assasinate than Generals...). Does the Zeal in the province affect the success chances

Don't think so but a bishop orn cardinal nearby reduced them (even if its your bishop IIRC). Also target's rank affects the chances i think.

"Burning the population". Firstly, what triggers this - do I just leave an Inquisitor sitting in an enemy province (without targetting anyone), where he will first raise zeal for a bit, and then eventually making it collapse by burning people?

Yes. I believe people being burnt also reduces happiness. He'll do it in your provinces too if you don't move him around

[el_slapper]

Vanilla inquisitors are rather crappy, but, properly managed, Grand inquisitors can even burn popes. You read it right, popes.

And that's the point of burning generals : training your GI up to 6 or 7 stars. Once there, if the location is zealous & the target not too high in piety, it will smell burned pig.....

[FadeAwayNot]

I played a campaign as the Spanish a while back and used grand inquisitors for the first time. I had three of them and they had great fun parading through the countryside burning enemy generals.

At first I thought this was incredibly fun, but ... the enemy generals are not replaced by equivelant generals. So by late game, I had many 6 to 9 star generals but my enemies all had 0-star generals. It completely wrecked the balance of the game, so I have not used them since.

However, I would like to burn the pope sometime, so maybe in a future campaign I will have to use them again, just to get them to the point where I can try to burn his Holiness.

[QuantumEleven]

Thanks for your help, everyone ~:)

el_slapper - does burning the General not just get replaced by a "clone" (same stats) the next turn anyway? If that's the case, then why burn him in the first place? Unless it's for training the Inquisitor up so that he can then go after higher-powered targets. Or does his military unit get disbanded when he gets burned...? (which would be very cool, as then you can eliminate enemy units without having to go to war... :devilish:)

FadeAwayNot - Do you play with the -green_generals switch, which (if I understood correctly) replaces a dusted general with a weaker version of himself. Could this be why they get replaced with weaker versions of themselves? Or is it the default behaviour?

[Procrustes]

Hi,

That thing about generals getting replaced with ones with identical stats is only true if the general dies of "old age". If you play with the -greengenerals switch your new general will have stats that are slightly less than his predicessor. However, if a general dies in combat, is assassinated, is burned at the stake, or is convicted of treason (by a spy) then he is gone for good.

I agree, too many inquisitors can really unbalance the game. I find that even vanilla inquisitors can burn kings once they've earned a few stars. One of the keys to increasing your chance of a successful inquistion trial is to increase the zeal of the province first - let an inquisitor or two sit there for a few turns and watch the zeal rise. Once it is high enough your odds of success rise dramatically. It's easiest to burn generals with low piety - it's hardest to burn royal family members. The presence of bishops or cardinals will lessen the chances that an inquistion will get started or succeed. Move your inquisitors around once in a while and accompany them with bishops if you don't want to burn the populance instead of preaching. Park them in a non-Catholic province if you just want to get them out of the way. (They will continue to convert the natives, but won't start any inquistions.)

One favored use of inquisitors is to raise the religious zeal in provinces you are going to send a crusade through - especially those of your neighbors. The higher the zeal in a province that a crusade crosses, the more troops it will hoover up - free meat for your juggernaught.

HTH,

(Edited for spelling, etc.)

[FadeAwayNot]

Procrustes had your answer. No, I don't play with -greengenerals-